Designing Machine Blueprints

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Machine blueprints are the complete specification for a machine, determining a machine's attributes, the manner in which it is provisioned, and its policy and management settings. Depending on the complexity of the catalog item you are building, you can combine one or more machine components in the blueprint with other components in the design canvas to create more elaborate catalog items that include networking and security, Software components, XaaS components, and other blueprint components.

Space-efficient storage technology eliminates the inefficiencies of traditional storage methods by using only the storage actually required for a machine's operations. Typically, this is only a fraction of the storage actually allocated to machines. vRealize Automation supports two methods of provisioning with space-efficient technology, thin provisioning and FlexClone provisioning.

Configure and publish a machine component as a standalone blueprint that other architects can reuse as a component in application blueprints, and catalog administrators can include in catalog services.

As a cloud or fabric administrator, you can create Microsoft Azure virtual machine blueprints that business group administrators employ as a building block to create customized provisioned machines for consumers. DevOps administrators can also create Azure machine blueprints, or they can use existing Azure machine blueprints when creating composite blueprints.

Using your IaaS architect privileges, you create a blueprint that supports Software components by using a snapshot of your provisioned machine as the reference machine to clone from. Because you want to support Software components, you install the guest agent and bootstrap agent on your provisioned machine before you take the snapshot.

If you want to allow your catalog administrators to entitle users to the Connect using RDP action for your Windows blueprints, you must add the RDP custom properties to your machine blueprint, and reference the custom RDP file your system administrator prepared.

As a blueprint architect, you want to allow your users to choose their own machine names when they request your blueprints. So you edit your existing CentOS vSphere blueprint to add the Hostname custom property and configure it to prompt users for a value during their requests.

As a blueprint architect, you want to allow your users to choose whether to provision machines on your Boston or London infrastructure, so you edit your existing vSphere CentOS blueprint to enable the locations feature.